Meograde printing=split grade printing??

[hadeer]

I use an Opemus enlarger with a Meopta Meograde head vor BW-printing. This head contains yellow and magenta filters that are moved in variable measure into the lightbeam that goes into the mixing chamber. E.G. the yellow filter could be 75 % in and the magenta filter 25% for a given grade. The filters are mechanically coupled to keep the exposure constant.
As I see it, this is equivalent to split grade printing. The only difference is that in split grade printing with single filters the time per filter, not the intensity of the coloured light would be varied. In the example above, this would boil down to t seconds for the magenta filter and 3t seconds for the yellow one.
Do I see this right?

 

[Nick Zentena]

No. What you are suggesting is like spilt grade printing with no dodging/burning. Most of the time you'll decide to adjust smaller areas with burning/dodging that will lead to different contrast in those areas.

Plus while the final result of your method would be like not dodging/burning it misses out one nice feature of split grade printing. With split you get to see the contrast on your test prints. Instead of picking a grade that you think is right. So you get both exposure and contrast grade with your test prints.

 

[Bob F.]

The primary feature of split-grade printing is that you make (at least) two separate exposures: one at a high contrast setting and another at a low contrast setting. The advantage is that that you can dodge/burn at each of the two different contrast settings providing potentially more control than is possible with a single exposure at one intermediate contrast setting.

You can still use your head for split-grade printing of course by dialling in two separate contrast settings (all yellow/no magenta & no yellow/all magenta).

Have fun, Bob.

 

[hadeer]

I have tried the different approches on the same negative and didn't see a significant difference in the prints (it is of course not straightforward to keep the total exposure equal in that case).
I didn't use any dodging or burning in in that case. I agree that the burning in part makes a difference. But I can do that after that first combined single exposure by dialing out the yellow entirely (or the magenta for that matter) and then burn in specific parts. It complicates the matter though.
Thanks for the comments, Hans

 

[GeorgesGiralt]

Hadeer,
No, you see the meograde wrong. The two filter in the head make a light filtration similar at the one you will have get if you used a, say, Ilford filter in the filter drawer. The main advantage of such a head is that you can have 2.1 filter instead of 2.5 like in the ilford set. So you can adjust filtration much more finely than with a set of discrete filters.
You can split grade print with this head : make a first exposure with the head set at grade 5 and another one with the head set for grade 0.
I, for one, do not like split grade printing, but YMMV.....